Stitches And Pins For Grieving Hearts
by Funky In Fishnet
Summary: Modern Day AU. Agron's been grief-stricken and living half a life ever since his brother died. So has Nasir. One day this model and clothes designer meet. It's the start of something important.


_**Disclaimer: I own nothing**_

_**Author Note: Warning - **references to self-harm_

* * *

**STITCHES AND PINS FOR GRIEVING HEARTS**

Mira's grin pulled Agron out of his usual fugue state. Her expression was extremely, scarily, satisfied, Agron hadn't seen her look like that since the time their model agency beat Ilythia's for the top spot on _Vogue_'s list. And now she was bearing that look down on him. It almost made him want to move. Instead he stared unblinkingly at her, something that had been unnerving people for months now. It got him what he wanted – an explanation.

"You've got him."

Agron's expression slackened. Mira laughed at his disbelief and punched his shoulder. "No word of a lie. They came asking for you."

That made Agron almost snort. Hardly anybody wanted to book him now. Since Duro's death, the scars and scowls he'd been wearing, and the way he'd been so obviously straining out of his skin, had put people off. Thank fuck for Spartacus and Sura and the legacy that Spartacus carried on in her name. An agency run by models for models, praised for and proud of the eclectic looks on their books. It had been Duro's home for years.

And now Agron finally had the chance to meet and work for the last designer that Duro had modelled for. It was what their last ever conversation had been about. It was what Agron had been doggedly trying to achieve for months.

Agron squeezed Mira's arm in thanks. He left a bright yellow Post-It note insult on Crixus's painstakingly neat advertising campaign board before he left. He hadn't done that for almost a year.

* * *

There was only one framed photo hung up in Agron's apartment. It was from Duro's last photoshoot. Gannicus, Duro, and Saxa walked down a dirt road together. They were surrounded by baked red earth, clear skies, and obviously scorching sunshine. All three wore suits, or what remained of them. Gannicus didn't have a jacket on and his shirt was almost completely unbuttoned. His trouser cuffs were torn and he was smirking. Saxa carried her shoes and wore a beautifully-detailed waistcoat. Duro was in the centre; his jacket slung over one shoulder as he looked up into the sun and grinned.

It was one of the few things that had truly made Agron smile since his brother's death, because that was who he saw in the photograph – his brother, not a model. And now he would get to meet the man who'd made that happen.

* * *

The first thing Agron noticed in the room was the enormous swimming tank filled with water and exotic fish. Before he saw anything else, a blonde beating the buttons of her Blackberry intercepted him. Her eyes swept him briefly. He felt like he'd been thoroughly assessed and judged in that nanosecond. It made his spine stiffen.

"Agron, I'm Chadara. Welcome to the Black Lagoon."

Agron nodded, his eyes drawn to the sleek metal and glass bracelet wrapped around Chadara's right wrist. There were tiny green and white lights flashing on and off amongst the glass pieces. He gestured to it.

"Is that….?"

Chadara glanced down and rolled her eyes, pressing something on the bracelet that made the coloured lights stop flashing. "That is a reminder that Nasir wants to see you right away. He custom-designed and made it for me, because apparently I have a memory problem."

Agron raised his eyebrows as he followed Chadara. Nasir had designed and made it? That seemed more like electronic engineering than clothing design. Duro had said that Nasir was brilliant in more ways than one. Chadara swept past the lighting technicians and racks of clothing before stopping in a pointedly quiet corner.

"Nasir, Agron's here."

A small slight man looked up. Agron drank him in. He was holding pins between his teeth, his hands tacking trouser hems. His jeans were worn though at the knees and his leather jacket looked older than he was. His long dark hair was braided in places and all tied back. On other people, the clothes could have been an affectation, a projected image. But on Nasir, they were a second skin. They were truly who he was. He was beautiful.

The designer offered a hand, revealing a wrist tattoo and a lot of leather bracelets. When they shook hands, Agron felt something tingling under his skin. He started, unnerved. Duro hadn't mentioned that.

"Thanks for being here," Nasir said, hands still moving deftly.

Agron shrugged a little. "Thanks for booking me."

Nasir nodded, his eyes studying Agron. His next words were quiet and conversational.

"You look like him."

Agron's stomach lurched. His hands clenched reflexively, nails digging into the flesh of his palms. But Nasir's eyes didn't hold any of the pity or syrupy sympathy that Agron was too used to seeing in people's expressions since Duro's death. Instead, there was understanding and a grief of Nasir's own. Agron hadn't been expecting that. He managed to nod as Chadara called that everything was ready.

Agron was still reeling but he greeted Naevia who looked beautiful in a backless top and was apparently ready for anything with her cameras and minions. Various dressers got Agron into Nasir-designed slacks and a button-down with the sleeves rolled up. They looked like they could be from the same line as the suit that Duro had modelled. Agron rubbed the shirt hem between his fingers.

Nothing was applied to cover up his now-many scars. Agron waited for somebody to say something about the ugly raw lines. But nobody did.

Naevia told him what she needed – he was going into the tank. His first underwater shoot. Agron immediately got what they were doing. It would be a great contrast to Duro's photo, which was bone dry and hot sunlight. If Agron's shots were put next to Duro's, it would be a very striking spread.

The water wasn't too cold. When Agron turned his head to talk to Naevia, he could see that Nasir was watching quietly. He'd probably given instructions before the shoot and was now watching to see what Naevia would create out of them. Agron held his gaze until Naevia told him to take a deep breath and dive.

They went through a lot of shots as he continually bobbed underwater. Naevia had him moving amongst the fish, face and body relaxed in their poses as though he was on dry land, until he floated up for air. It wasn't the most unusual demand he'd fulfilled on a shoot. Being under the water blocked everything out. Agron could have done it all day.

He spent the rest of the shoot sitting on the lip of the tank, his legs in the water, clothes and hair soaked as Naevia circled him from above on a crane, snapping pictures. She encouraged and instructed, prodding him into what she wanted. And the whole time Nasir stood there, watching.

Eventually Agron was given a towel robe and Naevia showed him the photos on her laptop. Agron's eyes widened. Despite the bizarre location, all the photos had an unvarnished unpretentious look to them. And as for Agron himself, there was a light in his eyes and an expression there that hadn't been present in any of his previous modelling shots. It was something haunting. Had he been thinking of Duro? Or maybe Nasir?

The designer nodded as they shook hands in goodbye. "That was good work."

"It was you and Naevia. I don't usually look like that."

Nasir looked like he was going to say more but Chadara broke into the conversation, gesturing to her phone and glowing bracelet, and chattered quickly about a very important interview that he had to do in less than ten minutes. Agron watched him leave, a dip in his chest.

After he'd visited the agency to let Mira know how things had gone, he went back to his apartment and found a stiff envelope waiting on the mat. He nearly dropped its contents. It was Duro, from the same shoot as the photograph Agron already had. This time it was Duro by himself, standing at the top of a craggy cliff. His feet were very close to the edge but he looked completely at ease. He'd lost his jacket and had both hands in his pockets. One eyebrow was raised as he turned his head slightly, looking across the horizon instead of into the camera. Agron could count on one hand the times that Duro had worn that look – when he'd been thinking about their Dad or about Diona. It wasn't a look that many people had gotten to see, apart from Agron.

At the bottom of the envelope was a slip of paper signed by Nasir. On the other side of it was a phone number.

* * *

Agron kept the number in his pocket for a while. He found himself regularly wrapping his fingers around it. He booked a couple of jobs. They all covered up his scars.

Mira called to congratulate him on his Nasir shoot, on how well it had come out. Naevia had been especially thrilled, which made Crixus happy so the office was almost peaceful for a few days.

A copy of GQ arrived in the post. Inside was a double-page spread of Nasir's designs, Duro in the red earth and sunshine on one side, Agron soaked through and haunted on the other. Agron stared at it for a long time, steadily refilling his whiskey glass.

The world had blurred comfortably, causing ridiculous ideas to become right, by the time he thumbed Nasir's number into his phone. He stared out of the window through the thick heavy air. Nasir answered after a couple of rings, his voice as sloping as Agron felt. He didn't sound surprised to hear from Agron. Silence unspooled between them, half awkward, half soft. Agron added a single word to it.

"Thanks." _For everything_ flew down the line silently.

Nasir hmmm quietly in reply. It sounded like he was out on the street somewhere – horns and tyres and people shouting in the background. Was it any cooler out there? Did the air stop trapping you once you reached the ground floor? Agron wasn't sure if he'd said any of that out loud or not.

Nasir sighed, it was bone-rattling. Agron knew that feeling. Maybe Nasir couldn't sleep either. Maybe his brain was as full as Agron's. Something had to cause the angry sharp lines of his designs.

Neither of them said much else for the rest of the night, but neither of them hung up either. Agron woke up on the couch, sunlight streaming in to bathe his face and the phone still pressed to his ear. Agron looked at it for a long moment. The last time he'd slept that well had been before Duro's death.

* * *

It should have been an awkward drunken one-off, but Nasir called him the next night and they sat in blessed silence again together. And the night after that, then the night after that one Agron made the call. There was something oddly soothing about the non-conversations that Agron couldn't help craving. Nasir seemed to be of the same mind. There was no small talk. Sometimes they talked about what they were drinking, and one night Agron learned that Nasir had lived a lot of his life abroad and that he missed the heat of it. That conjured up an image of a sweating Nasir, an image that made Agron swallow.

Duro would have laughed at him. Agron raised a glass to his brother's photo.

Often it was merely silence between them, only the sound of somebody breathing breaking it up. Agron frequently wondered what kept Nasir up at night. What had caused that grief in his expression. He never asked.

Then Mira called and announced that he had been booked again to do a shoot for Nasir. Agron narrowed his eyes. The little shit hadn't said a word about that during their phone calls. His heart leapt though. He was actually looking forward to a shoot, he was eager even. It'd been a while since that had happened. Something inside him ached in response.

The horse was the first thing he noticed at the shoot. It was a beauty, dark and dangerous. Nasir stood near it. He wore shades against the sun and a shirt that bared his arms and some of his chest. His hair was loose over his shoulders. If Duro had been there, he would have nudged Agron hard in the ribs. Agron nudged thin air in response. Duro would have gotten a lot of mileage out of mocking Agron about Nasir.

It could have been strange – seeing each other again after spending so many long, mostly silent, nights on the phone together. But Nasir's mouth turned up at the corners and Agron found himself smiling almost easily back. That was all they had before he was whisked away and then returned in distressed jeans that were threadbare in places and a creased shirt with a strangely-slashed neckline. Then he was meeting the horse and holding a bridle in one hand and a beer in the other – maybe it was a spin on drink driving? Somewhere, Duro was laughing.

Naevia guided Agron through the shoot in her usual smoothly skilled way. Agron found it difficult to take his eyes off Nasir, who stood nearby and stared back. Whatever happened to his expression when he looked at Nasir, Naevia liked how it turned out on film.

By the time the shoot was done and they'd gotten some twilight-tinged shots, Agron's head was thudding and Nasir had been led away by a film crew for something that needed to be filmed right at that moment. Agron couldn't tear his eyes from Nasir.

There was a space opening up inside of him. A space that wasn't focused on Duro. There was that pain again.

That night Agron dreamt of his brother. He was riding the photoshoot horse around a show-ring, laughing as he urged the animal into a fast canter. Then he looked right at Agron.

"Don't be so fucking stupid. I knew he'd be your type."

* * *

A collection of the horse photographs arrived a few days later. Agron spread them out across his lounge floor. He could tell in which ones he'd been staring at Nasir. When the light hit in a certain way, he could make out a signature in the corner of each photo. Firas. A hazy memory niggled. Agron frowned. Firas. When the itch to remember still hadn't disappeared a few hours later, he turned to Google.

Firas. Nasir's older brother, who'd died in a car wreck caused by a driver speeding through a red light. The designs that Nasir was currently working on, and that Agron had been modelling, were part of what was unofficially known as the Firas Collection.

Agron swigged another gulp of whiskey and fingered the thick scar that bisected the crook of his elbow. He toasted the photos and the man that he'd been staring at behind the camera. To whatever scars they now had, to the brothers who'd left them behind.

* * *

Nasir had music playing on set most of the time. It was an eclectic mix – gentle folk or pounding bass or industrial metal. Sometimes it didn't match the photo-shoot's mood at all. But Naevia rarely refused Nasir's choices. Music was often present in his phone calls to Agron too. Agron imagined him listening to the songs, staring out at the no-doubt-beautiful view from his house with that intense look on his face. Agron liked imagining Nasir.

The next time he was on Nasir's set, Agron hummed a bar of the song that Nasir most frequently played during their phone calls. It was a pure guitar piece, quiet and angry and rumbling low in a way that got into Agron's guts and teeth. When Nasir heard the humming, his lips twitched and pulled upward into a smile.

Chadara gripped Agron's arm fiercely. "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it."

* * *

On Duro's birthday, Agron went for a walk. He'd done the stay-at-home-get-angry-drunk-and-trash-the-place thing many times in the recent past. Those occasions had produced some of his worst scars. This time, he went to the huge nearby park. They'd used to all play rugby there – Crixus and Naevia and Spartacus and Sura and so many others. Saxa had always been the one to beat. Duro had usually jumped on Lugo's back and asked for an assist in tackling Crixus.

Agron sat down on a bench and pulled a fistful of white candles out of his bag. He lit them one by one, consumed by staring at the flames and not flinching when the hot wax dripped onto his fingers. He didn't know how long he sat there for, hunched over, candles in his tight grip, Duro on his mind.

A photo message came through from Nasir. It was of a photograph of Duro, a close-up. The intimate light of the room made Duro look otherworldly. But it was also still him, still his nose ring, still his dark eyes, still Agron's brother.

Agron swallowed and blew out the candles. The smoke burned his nostrils.

* * *

Nasir sent lots of photo messages after that. The range of subjects was vast. There were cloud formations, tyre tracks, Nasir's hands pointing to a pattern in a wall, a Most Promising Designer Award being used as a book end. Agron brushed his fingers over the screen whenever he received one. He saved them all.

He started to haltingly send photographs back. His collection of empty bottles catching the light by the lounge window, the latest message he'd left for Crixus, Mira magnificently shouting somebody down over the phone, the concrete beneath his feet. Bits of his day, bits of his home.

One night, Nasir sent a picture of a familiar-looking diner menu. The only text with it was a question mark.

Agron had been to that diner before. Nemetes and Lugo had competed over who could eat the most chilli burgers. Duro had tried hard to put them both off.

Agron hadn't seen Nasir face to face outside of a photo-shoot before. He glanced at himself in the mirror. He could hear Duro telling him not to be such a cowardly shit. He thought about breathing and smoke and a guitar's engrained wail. He thought about Nasir. He opened the apartment door and sent Nasir a photo of his car keys, resting in the open palm of his hand.

* * *

The diner was practically empty. Nasir sat in a corner booth. He looked worn but bright-eyed, wearing his familiar leather jacket. His leg rested comfortably against Agron's when Agron sat down opposite him. Agron ordered coffee and chilli burgers. They tasted as good as he remembered, burning comfortably across his tongue.

He spent most of the meal watching Nasir, as he always did when in the designer's presence. Neither of them talked to fill the silence, neither of them wanted to. It felt even better than it did over the phone. It felt like he could breathe without needing to punch something or someone.

They finished with thick melting scoops of home-made ice cream before heading outside. They found a wall to sit on that overlooked the crumbling wrecks of basketball courts. Agron could feel air filling and leaving his lungs. He was aware of the scars high up on his thighs, on his arms and shoulders and chest. He could look into the setting sun without squinting. Nasir rested his head on Agron's shoulder.

"I like that I can breathe now."

_With you_ went unsaid. Agron heard it anyway. He wrapped an arm around Nasir. It had never been about words for them.

In the cool light of the evening, he kissed Nasir's temple, cheek, and neck. His lips lingered. Nasir closed his eyes and shivered. He lingered too.

_-the end_


End file.
